It’s Saturday night. We had big plans to watch Nickelodeon’s Kid’s Choice Awards. We thought brownies would be a nice addition to the evening.
I have always thrown together the ingredients from the brownie recipe on the back of either the Hershey or Nestle cocoa box. For some reason today I decided to actually read the directions rather than just mixing and baking the listed ingredients like I usually do. I have to wonder how I have managed to successfully prepare these brownies since my early 20’s (I’m nearly 40!) and never notice that the Hershey version calls for BOILING water.
So, anyhow, the directions said to mix the cocoa and baking soda, add boiling water and stir until it thickened.
Wait! What? Stir until thickened?
OK, so I followed the directions wondering what exactly was going to happen.
I stirred and it became smooth and sort of thin and creamy. I faithfully kept stirring; wondering if something different should happen when suddenly…it happened! Tiny air bubbles appeared in the batter, the volume of the batter grew almost instantly and it was definitely thicker. I was amazed. (Well, amazed is a strong word, but I definitely did not expect it to thicken so much, nor so quickly.)
After the “thickening” happened I stirred the proper amounts of flour and salt into the mixture, poured the batter in a lightly greased pan and baked it in a preheated 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.
The brownies turned out perfectly but I could not stop thinking and wondering what caused the combination of cocoa, baking soda and boiling water to have that sort of reaction. I have been baking and cooking my entire life and never experienced this sort of reaction with this particular combination of ingredients. Being the geeky mom that I am I just had to google it.
I already knew that baking soda is a leavening agent, which means when it is added to baked goods before cooking it will produce carbon dioxide and cause them to 'rise' during the baking process.
chemistry.about.com says:
“Baking soda is pure sodium bicarbonate. When baking soda is combined with moisture and an acidic ingredient (e.g., yogurt, chocolate, buttermilk, honey), the resulting chemical reaction produces bubbles of carbon dioxide that expand under oven temperatures, causing baked goods to rise. The reaction begins immediately upon mixing the ingredients, so you need to bake recipes which call for baking soda immediately, or else they will fall flat! “
I did not fully understand how this caused my batter to “rise” or “thicken” suddenly in my bowl the way it did without the “baking” factor so I headed back to google where I learned that cocoa powder is acidic.
Aha! Now I understand.
Baking soda combined with moisture (water) and an acidic ingredient (cocoa powder) and oven temperature (which was not actually an oven but the heat in the “boiling” water) causes a chemical reaction which suddenly thickened the batter right in the bowl.
Very Neat!
We had a lot of fun eating brownies and watching Duane Johnson dress up like Miley Cyrus and the green slime flying all over.
If you would like to prepare this recipe with your children so they can be amazed at this "rising" or "thickening" process I have posted it with the title Hershey 5-Minute Brownie on my favorite recipe blog, “The Recipe Box”
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